I'll leave the 2016 thread for MLS Cup postmortems, but I think it's time for a new thread because the offseason ramps up fairly quickly now.
The past year was a fairly good one for the league. It broke the average attendance record again, there were modest gains in TV ratings, and continued development of infrastructure - progress on new stadiums, training facilities, investment in youth development, etc.
Next year Minnesota United and Atlanta United join the league. Atlanta will play at Georgia Tech until the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium is completed sometime in mid-2017. Minnesota will play at the University of Minnesota until their own stadium is finished for the 2018 season. This round of expansion fills in some important holes in the map and somewhat helps the playoffs by reducing the percentage of teams who make it.
LAFC is scheduled to join in 2018. The Miami Beckhams are still limping along and have yet to be officially awarded a franchise. It sounds like the league is legally obligated to support their bid for a set amount of time. At this point I expect the bid to collapse when the clock strikes midnight because they really don't seem to be getting anywhere.
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A reasonably high percentage of MLS players are on contracts with lots of club options and at this point most teams have announced who they are retaining and who they are cutting loose. Locally, the Revs didn't jettison too much of their roster and have less to re-tool than some, but they need to find a bunch of defenders and see if they can bring back Gershon Koffie to compete with Xavier Kouassi at DM.
There will be a flurry of activity over the next week and beyond. As always, there numerous obscure drafts that represent the sporting equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine. At the end of the day, it's all a product of MLSHQ's obsessive drive to prevent players from gaining negotiating leverage by ensuring that their rights within the league are held by someone or other.
The past year was a fairly good one for the league. It broke the average attendance record again, there were modest gains in TV ratings, and continued development of infrastructure - progress on new stadiums, training facilities, investment in youth development, etc.
Next year Minnesota United and Atlanta United join the league. Atlanta will play at Georgia Tech until the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium is completed sometime in mid-2017. Minnesota will play at the University of Minnesota until their own stadium is finished for the 2018 season. This round of expansion fills in some important holes in the map and somewhat helps the playoffs by reducing the percentage of teams who make it.
LAFC is scheduled to join in 2018. The Miami Beckhams are still limping along and have yet to be officially awarded a franchise. It sounds like the league is legally obligated to support their bid for a set amount of time. At this point I expect the bid to collapse when the clock strikes midnight because they really don't seem to be getting anywhere.
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A reasonably high percentage of MLS players are on contracts with lots of club options and at this point most teams have announced who they are retaining and who they are cutting loose. Locally, the Revs didn't jettison too much of their roster and have less to re-tool than some, but they need to find a bunch of defenders and see if they can bring back Gershon Koffie to compete with Xavier Kouassi at DM.
There will be a flurry of activity over the next week and beyond. As always, there numerous obscure drafts that represent the sporting equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine. At the end of the day, it's all a product of MLSHQ's obsessive drive to prevent players from gaining negotiating leverage by ensuring that their rights within the league are held by someone or other.
- 12/11 -- Today, there is a very brief transfer window in advance of the expansion draft. Look for teams to deal with Minnesota and Atlanta in particular, to get value for players they are comfortable dumping so that they can protect all the players they want to in the expansion draft.
- 12/13 -- Expansion draft. It'll only be five rounds instead of ten this year.
- 12/15 -- Waiver draft - mostly useless because most of the players eligible for this are bad
- 12/16 -- Re-Entry Draft, phase 1 - another mostly useless draft phase, as the players eligible for the RED are available because their old teams thought they weren't worth their 2016 salary
- 12/22 -- Re-Entry Draft, phase 2 - busier than phase 1 because players chosen in this phase can be offered lower salaries
- 1/13 -- college draft - always some quality players here, but never a ton of the
- 1/23 -- beginning of preseason
- 2/21 - 2/23 -- CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals, first leg: NYRB vs. VAN, DAL vs. Árabe Unido
- March, TBD - league play begins